Sweet Chilli Offers Tasty Choices

The Cashew Nuts lunch special at Sweet Chilli in West Hartford. (Carole Goldberg, Special…)

March 30, 2012|By CAROLE GOLDBERG, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Sweet Chilli

312 Park Road, West Hartford

860-233-7780 and http://www.sweetchilli312.com/

West Hartford has become a dining destination. Besides the popular spots in the center and Blue Back Square and the growing number in Elmwood, the Park Road area also offers great choices, and one of the newest is Sweet Chilli, a Thai restaurant. I visited with six friends and we found it a charming place to enjoy lunch.

THE VIBE: Sweet Chilli has a sleek and contemporary American ambience, with mustard and white walls, dark brown woodwork and burgundy and black upholstered seating, but the wall décor reminds you that this place celebrates Thai cuisine. Framed photos of Thai royalty abound, as do sequin-studded fabric art of elephants with their trunks raised for good luck. It was our good luck to visit on a Wednesday afternoon, when the place was quiet and the waitresses were attentive and very helpful.

THE FOOD: The lunch menu at Sweet Chilli's consists of two-course specials, curries, appetizers and desserts. The specials, all a basic $8.95 plus optional add-ons, are a great way to sample this place's carefully prepared and beautifully plated dishes. There are 13 combinations of stir-fried noodles or rice with vegetables, meats and seafood, as well as five curries. All come with the house soup or salad and three crispy spring rolls, crunchy outside and savory inside.

The soup that day was a coconut-infused broth and the salads were baby field greens and julienned carrots with a boldly peanut-y dressing that added a smoky richness and tasted house-made.

You get a choice of chicken, pork, veggies or tofu with your rice or noodle dish, or you can upgrade by adding beef, shrimp or squid for $2 more or scallops or mixed seafood for an extra $3.

Several of us ordered the classic Thai dish, pad Thai, which is rice noodles with a piquant sweet-sour tamarind sauce, bean sprouts, peanuts and egg. Sampling it is a good way to assess how the kitchen performs, and in this case, it did very well.

One of us had the yellow curry, a generous bowlful whose coconut milk sauce was enhanced by pineapples, tomatoes and onion. The flavor was beautifully balanced: spicy yet subtle. My friend, a great cook who knows her curries, was impressed.

I ordered "Cashew Nuts," a mixture of pork and vegetables in a tasty brown sauce enhanced by crisp cashews. The veggies —sliced red, orange and green peppers, onion, scallions, carrots, water chestnuts and some pineapple chunks for good measure, were all perfectly crisp-tender and the sliced pork also was soft and juicy. It came with a big scoop of white rice but was so filling that it hardly needed it.

We also ordered hot Thai tea, which came in small individual pots and was fragrant and refreshing, like a mild version of chai tea.

We were too full for desserts, but had we not been, we would have tried the Fried Ice Cream.

THE BILL: At lunch, entrees are $8.95 plus additions; soups, salads and appetizers are $2.95 to $5.95; and desserts and beverages range from $1.50 to $5.50. The dinner menu is more extensive, with prices ranging from $6.95 for Thai salad dishes to $21.95 for boneless duck with vegetables and seafood. Grilled pork, beef, shrimp and squid dinner dishes are $13.95 to $15.95.

THE PARTICULARS:Lunch is served Monday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p. m. Dinner is Monday to Thursday 5 to 9:30 p.m., Friday 5 to 10:30 p.m., Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday 4 to 9:30 p.m.

THE VERDICT: What's one word for authentic and well-prepared Thai dishes, friendly service and a pleasant atmosphere? Sweet!